Coaching India was the best thing for me: Chappell

Former India coach Greg Chappell might have had a controversial stint with the Indian team, but the Australian batting great recalled his experiences with great fondness and mentioned that getting an opportunity to coach India was the best thing for him.

In an interview to The Indian Express, Chappell, who was in India for the quadrangular series as coach of the Australia Under-19 team, mentioned that there were some parts which he could have done without but he called his experience with the Indian team as "overwhelmingly positive."

"Far from regretting the experience, I look back at my time in India with great fondness. Most of my experiences here were very good. There were parts that I could have done without. But that happens. When I look back it was overwhelmingly positive. It was a wonderful opportunity and a great honour to be asked to coach someone else's country," Chappell said.

"I couldn't coach Australia. Coaching India wasn't the next best thing, it was the best thing. India is the hub of cricket in the world these days and to work in that environment and try and understand it a bit better... I consider myself very fortunate," he added.

Mentioning that his focus as coach of the Indian side was to do what was best for the team, Chappell said the stint to him felt like a spiritual experience. The former India coach also said that the educational point of view was his main focus and went on to explain how India improved as an ODI side under him.

"My only interest in the time that I was in India was what was best for the Indian cricket team. The whole thing was a spiritual experience. The education point of view was one thing that we really focused on. India was struggling in one-day cricket, particularly chasing. And we made a process of getting the team to understand how to chase. And when we had seventeen wins in a row that was an enormous achievement."

"And it wasn't an achievement for me, it was an achievement for that group. They had to buy into it. Rahul Dravid as captain had to buy into it. There were a lot of risks. There were criticisms we were changing the team, we were changing the batting order.. And the fact that we got the guys buying in was tremendous," Chappell said.

Chappell said during his time as India coach, he tried to understand the culture by reading a lot of books and visiting the players at their homes.

"I have a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. I read it, I still read it. I have a copy of the Koran. I read that as well. I'm interested in all of that. (Ramesh) Mane the team physio was a Brahmakumari (follower). We went with him to the temple in Bandra. My wife went to the Hare Krishna temple in Bangalore where they serve meals to thousands of kids. When we went to Pakistan, Saeed Anwar took me to a teaching mosque outside Lahore. I wanted to understand that a bit more because we had Muslim players in our team -- Wasim Jaffer, Mohammad Kaif, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan. I felt I needed to understand something. I mean I couldn't speak the language, and I just wanted to understand their world a little bit better, in the hope that that would help me, help them."

Citing an example how the language barrier was not much of a factor, Chappell said: "I went to Irfan's home in Baroda and of course they couldn't speak much English and of course I couldn't speak any Urdu. But you look into someone's eyes and you can understand. Irfan's mother spoke to my wife and she said 'thank you for looking after my son.' And we got a thrill from the fact that they appreciated that we were looking after their kids. And they were like our kids. Because they were young, they were vulnerable and they needed someone to look out for them."

When asked what went wrong during his stint as coach, Chappell said the certain misunderstandings and people not wanting to see the complete picture led to the tumultuous time.

"As you know in that role, the spotlight is such that nobody wants to understand what is going on underneath. All they saw was what they wanted to. If it had worked, you would be a hero and if it hadn't, you would have been a zero. Generally what I have found in life is what you see isn't necessarily the whole story. But no one was really looking at what Greg Chappell the coach was saying, and try and understand Greg Chappell the person. I tried to explain what we were trying to do, but in fact, it was counter-productive. People just used it against me."

Chappell was at loggerheads with former India captain Sourav Ganguly when he was coach of the side and when asked if he had made peace with the batting star, the Australian said: "I was in Kolkata earlier in the year and I learned that Sourav's father had passed away and I rang him and spoke to him at that time and passed on condolences. I'm sure he was a little surprised but he said he appreciated it very much. As I explained to him at the time it wasn't anything personal (about the decisions I made). I rather liked Sourav and I admired him as a cricketer but at that point he probably wasn't the best person to be in that position."

Mentioning that the media at that time blew things out of proportion, Chappell said he liked Ganguly as a person and his decisions as coach were only taken in the interest of Indian cricket.

"When you take a decision, you go with it all the way regardless of what happens. I believed and it was agreed that this was the best team for Indian cricket and the team at that stage. Sections of the media wanted to portray that it was me against Sourav. But it was nothing to do with that. It was purely to do with the cricket. In fact I quite liked Sourav and I have had some great experiences with him. He had been with me in Sydney before the tour of Australia in 2003, and it was a wonderful experience," he said.

"And I said it before and even subsequent to the issues that we have had that Sourav considers me the best batting coach he ever had. So we had a mutual respect but I hardly expected him to agree with some of the decisions I made. But our relationship was separate from our job. If he had been my brother I would have done the same thing," Chappell added.